Charlie Brown's post mortem

Charlie Brown's troubles continued during the week as the parent company closed additional locations and then filed for bankruptcy.

The chain's problems can't be blamed entirely on the current economy. The former president and CEO, Russell D'anton (who had worked his way up from busboy), plead guilty this year to charges involving vendor kickbacks.

In retrospect if the only location (in Kingston NJ) that I patronized was typical it isn't too surprising the chain was in trouble. The building was far larger than needed for the current customer traffic and you would sometimes see clumps of employees standing around doing nothing. Restaurants seem to be a business where it is important to have an owner (or someone else who really cares about the bottom line) around a lot keeping an eye on things. Things seemed a little lackadaisical at the Kingston location.

Charlie Brown's

I went to eat at the Charlie Brown's Steakhouse in Kingston last night and found a sign on the door saying this location had been closed. A bit disconcerting as I had eaten there last week and seen no indications of distress. Apparently the chain is in trouble and closed numerous locations Monday. A minor inconvenience for me, a bit worse for the 1400 employees affected.

Fall back

I tend to find DST confusing. Hopefully I have managed to adjust my clocks correctly although yesterday I was under the misapprehension that I was going to lose an hour instead of gain an hour.

Election 2010

Someone said the real power voters have in a democracy is to "throw the bums out" when they don't like how things are being run. Applying this principle I selected the Republican ticket when I voted by mail on Saturday. This may have been a bit irresponsible as some of the Republican candidates are uninspiring to say the least. But the nuttier ones have no chance so I don't have to worry too much about what they would do if they actually won.

As for the election overall, for what it's worth, my prediction is that the Republicans do well but under perform current expectations a bit. We will know soon enough.

Giants win

I grew up in Livermore California and for a while as a kid was a fairly serious San Francisco Giants fan. As I recall I started following the team in 1963 (prompted by the Giants 1962 World Series near miss). After a few years I gradually lost interest. The Oakland A's arrived in 1968 and at some point I shifted my primary allegiance to them. In recent years I haven't followed either team much. Still I watched the last couple of innings of the World Series and was glad to see the Giants finally win.